scholarly journals Monitoring and Evaluation of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Three Rivers in Northeast China

Author(s):  
Chen Zhao ◽  
Chenyu Li ◽  
Xiaoming Wang ◽  
Zhuosong Cao ◽  
Chao Gao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have become an important public health problem. In this study, we used metagenomic sequencing to analyze the composition of ARGs in certain original habitats of northeast China, comprising three different rivers and riverbank soils of the Heilongjiang River, Tumen River, and Yalu River. Results: Twenty types of ARG were detected in every water sample. The major ARGs were multidrug resistance genes, at approximately 0.5 copies/16s rRNA, accounting for 57.5% of the total ARG abundance. The abundance of multidrug, bacitracin, beta-lactam, macrolide‑lincosamide‑streptogramin, sulfonamide, fosmidomycin, and polymyxin resistance genes covered 96.9% of the total ARG abundance. No significant ecological boundary of ARG diversity was observed. The compositions of the resistance genes in the three rivers were very similar to each other, and 92.1% of ARG subtypes were shared by all water samples. Except for vancomycin resistance genes, almost all ARGs in riverbank soils were detected in the river water. About 31.05% ARGs were carried by Pseudomonas. Opportunistic pathogenic bacteria carrying resistance genes were mainly related to diarrhea and respiratory infections. Multidrug and beta-lactam resistance genes correlated positively with mobile genetic elements (MGEs), indicating a potential risk of diffusion.Conclusions: The composition of ARGs in three different rivers was similar, indicating that climate played an important role in ARG occurrence. ARG subtypes in river water were almost completely the same as those in riverbank soil. ARGs had no significant geographical distribution characteristics. Many ARGs were carried by human pathogenic bacteria related to human diarrhea and respiratory infections, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aeromonas caviae. In general, our results provide a valuable dataset of river water ARG distribution in northeast China. The related ecological geography distribution characteristics should be further explored.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Zhao ◽  
Chenyu Li ◽  
Xiaoming Wang ◽  
Zhuosong Cao ◽  
Chao Gao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have become an important public health problem. In this study, we used metagenomic sequencing to analyze the composition of ARGs in certain original habitats of northeast China, comprising three different rivers and riverbank soils of the Heilongjiang River, Tumen River, and Yalu River. Results: Twenty types of ARG were detected in every water sample. The major ARGs were multidrug resistance genes, at approximately 0.5 copies/16s rRNA, accounting for 57.5% of the total ARG abundance. The abundance of multidrug, bacitracin, beta-lactam, macrolide‑lincosamide‑streptogramin, sulfonamide, fosmidomycin, and polymyxin resistance genes covered 96.9% of the total ARG abundance. No significant ecological boundary of ARG diversity was observed. The compositions of the resistance genes in the three rivers were very similar to each other, and 92.1% of ARG subtypes were shared by all water samples. Except for vancomycin resistance genes, almost all ARGs in riverbank soils were detected in the river water. About 31.05% ARGs were carried by Pseudomonas. Opportunistic pathogenic bacteria carrying resistance genes were mainly related to diarrhea and respiratory infections. Multidrug and beta-lactam resistance genes correlated positively with mobile genetic elements (MGEs), indicating a potential risk of diffusion.Conclusions: The composition of ARGs in three different rivers was similar, indicating that climate played an important role in ARG occurrence. ARG subtypes in river water were almost completely the same as those in riverbank soil. ARGs had no significant geographical distribution characteristics. Many ARGs were carried by human pathogenic bacteria related to human diarrhea and respiratory infections, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aeromonas caviae. In general, our results provide a valuable dataset of river water ARG distribution in northeast China. The related ecological geography distribution characteristics should be further explored.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn Loo ◽  
Amanda Zain ◽  
Gaik Chin Yap ◽  
Rikky W Purbojati ◽  
Daniela I Drautz-Moses ◽  
...  

Abstract Background While there is increasing knowledge about the gut microbiome, the factors influencing and the significance of the gut resistome are still not well understood. Infant gut commensals risk transferring multidrug-resistant antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) to pathogenic bacteria. The rapid spread of multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria is a worldwide public health concern. Better understanding the naïve infant gut resistome may build the evidence base for antimicrobial stewardship in both humans and in the food industry. Given the high carriage rate of extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)- producing Enterobacteriaceae in Asia, we aimed to evaluate community prevalence, dynamics, and longitudinal changes in antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) profiles and prevalence of ESBL-producing .E coli and K. pneumoniae in the intestinal microbiome of infants participating in the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) study, a longitudinal cohort study of pregnant women and their infants. Methods We analysed ARGs in the first year of life among 75 infants who had stool samples collected at multiple timepoints using metagenomics. Results The mean number of ARGs per infant increased with age. The most common ARGs identified confer resistance to aminoglycoside, beta-lactam, macrolide and tetracycline antibiotics; all infants harboured these antibiotic resistance genes at some point in the first year of life. Few ARGs persisted throughout the first year of life. Beta-lactam resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae were detected in 4 (5.3%) and 32 (42.7%) of subjects respectively. Conclusion In this longitudinal cohort study of infants living in a region with high endemic antibacterial resistance, we demonstrate that the majority of the infants harboured several antibiotic resistance genes in their gut and showed that the infant gut resistome is diverse and dynamic over the first year of life.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn Loo(Former Corresponding Author) ◽  
Amanda Zain ◽  
Gaik Chin Yap ◽  
Rikky W Purbojati ◽  
Daniela I Drautz-Moses ◽  
...  

Abstract Background While there is increasing knowledge about the gut microbiome, the factors influencing and the significance of the gut resistome are still not well understood. Infant gut commensals risk transferring multidrug-resistant antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) to pathogenic bacteria. The rapid spread of multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria is a worldwide public health concern. Better understanding the naïve infant gut resistome may build the evidence base for antimicrobial stewardship in both humans and in the food industry. Given the high carriage rate of extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)- producing Enterobacteriaceae in Asia, we aimed to evaluate community prevalence, dynamics, and longitudinal changes in antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) profiles and prevalence of ESBL-producing E. coli and K. pneumoniae in the intestinal microbiome of infants participating in the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) study, a longitudinal cohort study of pregnant women and their infants. Methods: We analysed ARGs in the first year of life among 75 infants at risk of eczema who had stool samples collected at multiple timepoints using metagenomics. Results: The mean number of ARGs per infant increased with age. The most common ARGs identified confer resistance to aminoglycoside, beta-lactam, macrolide and tetracycline antibiotics; all infants harboured these antibiotic resistance genes at some point in the first year of life. Few ARGs persisted throughout the first year of life. Beta-lactam resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae were detected in 4 (5.3%) and 32 (42.7%) of subjects respectively. Conclusion: In this longitudinal cohort study of infants living in a region with high endemic antibacterial resistance, we demonstrate that majority of the infants harboured several antibiotic resistance genes in their gut and showed that the infant gut resistome is diverse and dynamic over the first year of life.


2016 ◽  
Vol 74 (8) ◽  
pp. 1753-1763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Heß ◽  
Frauke Lüddeke ◽  
Claudia Gallert

Whereas the hygienic condition of drinking and bathing water by law must be monitored by culture-based methods, for quantification of microbes and antibiotic resistance in soil or the aquatic environment, often molecular genetic assays are used. For comparison of both methods, knowledge of their correlation is necessary. Therefore the population of total bacteria, Escherichia coli, enterococci and staphylococci during sewage treatment and in receiving river water was compared by agar plating and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays. In parallel, all samples were investigated for clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes. Whereas plating and qPCR data for total bacteria correlated well in sewage after primary treatment, qPCR data of river water indicated higher cell numbers for E. coli. It is unknown if these cells are ‘only’ not growing under standard conditions or if they are dead. Corresponding to the amount of non-culturable cells, the ‘breakpoints’ for monitoring water quality should be adapted. The abundances of clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes in river water were in the same order of magnitude or even higher than in treated sewage. For estimation of the health risk it is important to investigate which species carry respective genes and whether these genes are disseminated via gene transfer.


Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 378
Author(s):  
Inka Marie Willms ◽  
Maja Grote ◽  
Melissa Kocatürk ◽  
Lukas Singhoff ◽  
Alina Andrea Kraft ◽  
...  

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in soil are considered to represent one of the largest environmental resistomes on our planet. As these genes can potentially be disseminated among microorganisms via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and in some cases are acquired by clinical pathogens, knowledge about their diversity, mobility and encoded resistance spectra gained increasing public attention. This knowledge offers opportunities with respect to improved risk prediction and development of strategies to tackle antibiotic resistance, and might help to direct the design of novel antibiotics, before further resistances reach hospital settings or the animal sector. Here, metagenomic libraries, which comprise genes of cultivated microorganisms, but, importantly, also those carried by the uncultured microbial majority, were screened for novel ARGs from forest and grassland soils. We detected three new beta-lactam, a so far unknown chloramphenicol, a novel fosfomycin, as well as three previously undiscovered trimethoprim resistance genes. These ARGs were derived from phylogenetically diverse soil bacteria and predicted to encode antibiotic inactivation, antibiotic efflux, or alternative variants of target enzymes. Moreover, deduced gene products show a minimum identity of ~21% to reference database entries and confer high-level resistance. This highlights the vast potential of functional metagenomics for the discovery of novel ARGs from soil ecosystems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (13) ◽  
pp. 6891
Author(s):  
João S. Rebelo ◽  
Célia P. F. Domingues ◽  
Francisco Dionisio ◽  
Manuel C. Gomes ◽  
Ana Botelho ◽  
...  

Recently, much attention has been paid to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet bacterial resistance to antibiotics remains a serious and unresolved public health problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually, being an insidious and silent pandemic. To contain the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, populations confined and tightened hygiene measures. We performed this study with computer simulations and by using mobility data of mobile phones from Google in the region of Lisbon, Portugal, comprising 3.7 million people during two different lockdown periods, scenarios of 40 and 60% mobility reduction. In the simulations, we assumed that the network of physical contact between people is that of a small world and computed the antibiotic resistance in human microbiomes after 180 days in the simulation. Our simulations show that reducing human contacts drives a reduction in the diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in human microbiomes. Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn’s pairwise tests show very strong evidence (p < 0.000, adjusted using the Bonferroni correction) of a difference between the four confinement regimes. The proportion of variability in the ranked dependent variable accounted for by the confinement variable was η2 = 0.148, indicating a large effect of confinement on the diversity of antibiotic resistance. We have shown that confinement and hygienic measures, in addition to reducing the spread of pathogenic bacteria in a human network, also reduce resistance and the need to use antibiotics.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi Fatahi-Bafghi ◽  
Sara Naseri ◽  
Ali Alizehi

Abstract Having various clinical applications, probiotic bacteria are currently used in the diet. There are reports of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in these bacteria that can be transferred to other microflora and pathogenic bacteria. The aim of the study is to examine whole-genome sequence analysis in bacteria with probiotic properties. Moreover, this study follows existing issues about the importance and presence of ARGs in these bacteria the dangers of which may affect human health in the years to come. In the present study, 126 complete probiotic bacterial genomes were collected and analysed for ARGs. The results of the study shows there are various antibiotic resistant genes of in these bacteria some of which can be transmitted to other bacteria. We propose microorganisms be applied as a probiotic element in various types of products, antibiogram be conducted for a large number of antibiotics and analysis of complete genome sequence for ARGs prediction.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Honghong Guo ◽  
jie gu ◽  
Xiaojuan Wang ◽  
Zilin Song ◽  
Xun Qian ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: The proliferation of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in compost and their horizontal transfer to human pathogenic bacteria (HPB) may lead to the failure of human antibiotics. However, the antibiotic resistome in compost has not been comprehensively characterized. This study used a metagenomic approach to obtain new insights into the effects of oxytetracycline (OTC) and copper (Cu) on the antibiotic resistome during swine manure composting and the risks posed to human health. Results: The results showed that composting reduced the abundances and diversity of ARGs and HPB in swine manure. In total, 289 ARG subtypes and 19 ARG types were detected in the samples with abundances ranging from 1.08 ´ 10 –1 to 9.39 ´ 10 –1 copies/16S rRNA, which mainly encoded tetracycline, aminoglycoside, and macrolide–lincosamide–streptogramin (MLS) resistance genes. The application of OTC and Cu, especially the combined application, exacerbated the compost resistome risk scores and specific ARG subtypes responded differently. Tetracycline, multidrug, and MLS resistance genes mainly affected resistance profiles of HPB throughout the composting process. HPB and intI1 had significant positive effects on determining the ARG profiles during the composting process, and the co-selective effect of heavy metals may increase the abundances of ARGs via strong positive effects on intI1 . In addition, the effect of mobile genetic elements on the horizontal gene transfer of ARGs should not be ignored. Conclusions: This study of the antibiotic resistome in compost indicates the need for effective regulation of the misuse of livestock and poultry feed additives in order to minimize the spread of the antibiotic resistome in agro-ecosystems and decrease the potential risk to public health. Keywords: Antibiotic resistome; Composting; Metagenome; Pathogenic host; Swine manure


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document